Would Have
by Polly Lynn
Summary: "She asks as though she's suddenly suspicious. Like he planned this. He starts guiltily, like he did. Like he planned exactly this. He would have. If he thought there was a hope in hell of it working. If it weren't so f***ing complicated, he would have planned this. Whatever this is." Last call (3 x 10) episode tag. One shot.


Title: Would Have

Rating: T

WC: ~2500

Spoilers: Set at the end of Last Call; very general spoilers for mid-season 3

Summary: "She asks as though she's suddenly suspicious. Like he planned this. He starts guiltily, like he did. Like he planned exactly this. He would have. If he thought there was a hope in hell of it working. If it weren't so f***ing complicated, he would have planned this. Whatever this is."

A/N: No clue where this really came from, other than the fact that I recently watched Last Call and all of a sudden my brain was like "Hey, Bar Sex!" And I was like, "No, man, we can't make that work, because they're both with other people." And brain kept repeating "Bar Sex!" louder and louder. And even though my brain agrees with me, it forced me to write this. It's Not!Bar Sex.

The whole pant leg of time thing? Blatantly stolen from Terry Pratchett, who is awesome. Homage, not stealing, yo!

Thanks to Cora Clavia for helping me talk either myself or my brain or both of us off the Bar Sex ledge.

* * *

It's terrible. The scotch. Truly, thoroughly, irredeemably terrible. But it's a five-figure point of pride with him, and the amber line in his malt glass goes up and down and up again and she's egging him on. Maybe that's what she's doing or maybe it's more complicated than that.

She's keeping pace. Pour for pour, she matches him. She shudders every time she knocks it back and fantastic things are happening on her tongue. Five-figure insults and these prep-school consonants all of a sudden.

Maybe it's not so complicated. She has to be his. Any woman who is this articulate after easily a third of a bottle of truly terrible, century-old scotch has to be his.

She hasn't gotten the memo, though. That she has to be his. She doesn't seem to know, because she's going somewhere. She's draping herself over the bar. Her toes leave the ground and her hips shimmy as she surfs over the top on her belly and roots around underneath and maybe she _has_ gotten the memo. Maybe she's writing it right now.

He makes his way to the bar and props himself next to her in case of emergency. For all the good he'd be in case of emergency. His head swims just looking at her. Alcohol and want. _Want._

It's hard not to take it as an invitation when she drops to the ground and spins toward him. She's not swaying. She's absolutely steady on her feet and she spins right into his arms and he's blinking down at her. She stares up at him for a long unwavering moment. Then she blinks, too, and he'd like to kick something.

"Where is everyone?" She asks as though she's suddenly suspicious. Like he planned this.

He starts guiltily, like he did. Like he planned exactly this.

He would have. If he thought there was a hope in hell of it working. If it weren't so fucking complicated, he would have planned this. Whatever this is.

His hands fall away from her, and he's annoyed. He _didn't_ plan it and there shouldn't be guilt for would have, and who spun right into whom, and what the hell, anyway? _What the hell?_

"Gone," he says sullenly. "Everyone's gone. You know that."

"Yeah," she says. Now _she_ looks guilty. Now she looks sad. That _sucks._

She's pushing something into his chest and it's regrettably not any part of her. It's a shot glass. That's what all the upside down hip action must have been about. A shot glass. Insult to five-digit injury. Rubbing it in that this scotch is _terrible _and hardly even worth shooting.

"Not much left," he says, hefting the red bottle. He's relieved and trying not to show it, but she knows. Of course she knows.

"Let's put it out of its abject misery, then," she says and she smiles hard. Not guilty. Not sad. But not like before, either.

_Abject_. _God._ She has to be his.

But she's not. She's with Josh. She was _with_ Josh—in bed with Josh—when he called.

_She was in bed with Josh. _He tries to keep that uppermost in his mind. That and Gina. Gina should probably be uppermost. But it occurs to him—not for the first time—that she's not. And there's the guilt again. The guilt of would have.

He takes the glass from her and turns away, but she follows. She closes the gap as soon as he puts space between them. She's supervising while he pours, practically draping herself over his back to do it.

It's really hard to keep track of uppermost when she does that. When she's using words like _meniscus_ and _parallax _and generally giving him hell about his uneven pour.

It's hard to keep track of uppermost when something that sounds suspiciously like really terrible, really expensive scotch whispers that she got out of bed with Josh to meet _him_. That she merrily waved goodbye to Montgomery and Ryan when they took off after the first lousy swallow of the stuff. That she shut Esposito's big brother routine down in 10 seconds flat. Told him she'd get herself home when she was ready.

And now she's reaching over his shoulder to tilt some of her shot—the last one—into the wider mouth of his glass. So he guesses she's not ready to go home just yet and what was that about uppermost again?

He turns back toward her and she glides down his body and peels herself away, holding the shot glass up to the light. Even the color is terrible. _Jaundiced_, she'd said when he poured the first round and fixed him with that stare.

She crashes her glass into his and cocks her elbow. She tips her head all the way back and there are several miles of the long column of her throat visible and he wonders absently where all the buttoned-up went. The vest and the jacket and the every single button. They're not in undercover territory, but he remembers those prim grey checks ascending almost to her chin and now . . . _and now. _

Her chin rocks forward, hers shoulders undulate, and she slams the shot glass down on the bar. She arches an eyebrow at him. "Ready to confess, Castle?"

He feels his eyes go wide and his jaw drop. She laughs, and there's that flash of throat again and at this point, there's very little keeping him from diving under the collar of her shirt.

"Confess?" he asks faintly. He's stalling for time.

"Are you ready to admit? Concede? Capitulate? Acquiesce?" It's like she's stalking toward him. She's not two feet away and that matters not at all.

"Acquiesce?" He repeats the word and it's clumsy on his own tongue.

"That this is categorically undrinkable." She shakes her head at him pityingly.

She reaches out toward him and he sees only three possibilities for how the immediate future will unfold:

His knees will buckle and he will fall on his face. She will laugh and maybe kick him while he's down and whatever this is will be over.

He will set the place on fire as a diversion. Then what? He has no fucking clue.

He actually will dive inside her shirt.

There's a fork in the road here. It's the stuff of time travel and alternate universes. Because she might punch him in the face. She might punch him any number of places. He doesn't think she'll shoot him. He's pretty sure she won't shoot him. But those are all the same fork. The same pant leg of time. He calls it "Violent Comeuppance."

But along the other fork—down the other pant leg—there's no violence. No comeuppance. Or a different kind of comeuppance . . . and is he _twelve_ all of a sudden? He might be twelve.

He calls the other pant leg "Finally." In Finally, there's only more and more her skin appearing under more and more of his, and the buttons and the draping and everything since her first polysyllabic insult make him wonder if they're not already well down that pant leg and he's only just catching up.

She reaches out to him and he braces for the fall, one kind or another, but she just hooks a finger over the lip of his glass and tugs.

"Hey!" He tugs back, more on instinct than anything, but she doesn't let go and there goes any gap between them again. Her thighs are practically brushing his and this is about to get embarrassing. He draws the glass into his chest protectively, but she has freakishly strong fingers and she just keeps hanging on, closer than ever now. "That's mine," he says faintly.

"Oh I wouldn't _dream _of depriving you of this . . . elixir, Castle." She tugs once more, then lets go.

The scotch sloshes in response, but there's so little left it mercifully does _not _end up all over his shirt, complicating matters any further. He raises the glass so forcefully and abruptly to his lips that it bangs against his teeth painfully and she laughs again.

Something—annoyance, lust, or just good, old-fashioned alcohol-fueled bad judgment—has him knocking back the last of the horrible stuff and reaching past her to slam his own glass down on the bar next to hers.

The move startles her. Her hand snakes out like she wasn't expecting the sudden invasion of her personal space, so how the hell does she think _he _feels?

Her fingers curl around his forearm and it's a serious question all of a sudden: How the hell does she think he feels?

They're both staring down at that point of contact. Where her fingers disappear beneath the dark red fabric of his shirt. Under the cuff where it's coming unrolled, sloppy and casual and almost unbearably intimate. He thinks he could bear a little more. He would have planned this. There's guilt over that. There's guilt, but it doesn't stand a chance.

She smells amazing. It's impossible, but somehow the foul-smelling scotch is completely transformed on her breath and his eyes travel to her face, like he'll be able to see how it's done. Her gaze follows. Tracks with his and they're locked there in the moment, far too close together and not nearly close enough. Not nearly.

He's not really taller than her. Not in heels. Not when she's in full armor, but there's the sudden illusion of it. That he's hovering over her. That she could tip her head back just so much and he wouldn't be hovering any more.

And she does. She tips her head back or maybe he leans in to her or maybe they fall. Maybe they both fall.

By rights it should be hard, that kiss. It should be hot and fast. Desperate and more than a little angry. It should be about too much scotch and getting caught up in trapdoors and secret passages and the past. It should be absolutely full of plausible deniability.

But it's none of that. His lips come down on hers three times. The barest time and space between them, but still. Three times. Four, and her hand is on his arm and they haven't moved. She sighs, then. An infinitely soft sound of realization. Contentment.

And then there's heat, but it's a slow and steady build. Her mouth opens and his answers. She turns her back to the bar and he turns with her, feet shuffling, their legs tangling as his arms come around her. There's heat, then. Desperation in the way they work out how to get closer. Closer.

There's always desperation. At least for him, there is, but it's measured and deliberate and there's nothing at all that's one sided. Not when she eases herself up on to a stool and her hands at the small of his back urge him closer. Not when their eyes flicker open at the same time it really should end things, but it doesn't.

The kiss ends. That ends, and their lips drift apart. But they're left tangled together and neither of them moves to remedy it. He does dive beneath her collar then, and she laughs. Of all things, she laughs and she presses her palms along his spine.

She shivers. A long, lingering ripple running through her.

He presses kisses in a careful line up her neck. From the notch between her collar bones to just behind one ear and he hovers. His breath is in her hair. Not quite words, but the moment just before them and she feels it. She feels it and her arms go tighter around him.

"Castle?"

"Kate." He relaxes against her. It's like a stay of execution. That she spoke first and it's nothing worse than his name. Nothing worse. It makes him bold. He nips at her earlobe. Scrapes his teeth over the skin behind her ear and she bends to him.

Her fingers find purchase in his hair and she's saying his name again. Maybe to warn him. Maybe to beg. Maybe to stop him, but probably not. Probably not.

He wants it to go on forever. This heart-tripping rhythm between them and nothing weightier than their names passing back and forth.

The worst thing about it is she wants that, too. Everything—her hands, her lips, and her body at rest against his—tells him that this isn't just him. There's a kind of joyless rightness to it. It can't go on forever. It can't. But at least he's not alone in the pant leg.

His mouth comes back to her ear and his head is heavy on her shoulder. "Kate . . . is this a trick?"

He regrets the words the instant they're hanging in the air. The instant before that. All the softness goes out of her and he's leveled by a wave of longing for it. For her. For one second ago.

"I'm sorry. No, Kate. I'm sorry." He holds on to her, babbling. Innocent brushes of his lips against her temple, her hair, her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Trick?" she chokes it out. She's not still, but she's not fighting him so hard. "What the hell, Castle?"

"Not trick. I didn't mean trick," he says quickly. His hands move furiously over her shoulders, her back, down her arms. "I'm . . . This isn't right, is it?"

That stills her and he braces. Waits for her to pull away and whatever happens then. Violent comeuppance, probably. If he's lucky. If she doesn't walk away without a word. If she doesn't end him one way or the other.

He braces, but she tips her head forward. It pushes him back half a step, but no more. No more, because her arms are looped around his waist and her forehead is resting against his chest, and it would be perfect if she weren't shaking her head.

The alcohol seems to hit him all at once. The bad parts that burn his throat and hammer at his skull. Or maybe it's not the alcohol at all. Maybe it's three years and lousy timing and the harsh reality that there's only one pant leg. That it's not right.

"I want it to be," he mumbles into her hair and he hates himself a little for the whine underneath. More than a little.

But she nods. A movement so slight that he thinks he imagined it. A soft syllable follows, though. "Yeah."

They stand like that for a long moment, her fingers hooked through his belt loops, his head bowed over hers, just breathing.

She'll go any minute now. She'll straighten up and he'll step away and she'll go. They won't say anything more than goodnight now. Until tomorrow. They won't say anything more.

It isn't right.

But she's warm and real in his arms and they're both breathing.

He would have planned this.

He would have.


End file.
